Kernel Panic?! Why did this happen?

There could be hundreds or thousands of reasons why. Bad hardware or some shonky software are the most common causes.

Without the panic dump, nobody can know.

Hi Kateh,

If you do a search on these forums for "kernel panic," you'll find lots of good information about what to do if you can't get them to stop and so on. If you've only had one and a restart seemed to solve the issue, I wouldn't worry about it too much, especially since your computer is new. Since it's still under warranty, you could always call AppleCare and have them troubleshoot with you, or you could take it to the Genius Bar. Some people on this forum may disagree with my "wait and see" attitude, though. :P

As with anything else, though, make sure you have a recent backup. And searching through your Console (in Applications > Utilities) logs may help you narrow down the issue.

Hope that helps!
—Hazy

See What is a kernel panic, Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ, and Resolving Kernel Panics for more details.

Hi KatehSparrow: That certainly looks to be a RAM issue. It may be bad RAM or a RAM stick that isn't seated in it's slot correctly. If there is an Apple store near you, it would certainly be worth having them take a look at it.

Stedman

Hi Kateh,

Yikes. Sorry that turned out to be the issue.

Remember, though, that RAM is pretty sensitive. Don't worry about this setting the tone for your new machine; I'm sure that everything will be fine once this problem is resolved.

Keep us updated on what the outcome is!

—Hazy

Thanks for the feedback. It's a simple thing for the store to replace/reseat the RAM and the service shouldn't cost you anything. Good computing.

Glad you found a reasonable solution. Good computing,

My Mac guru since 2002, insists that Kernel Panic is always hardware related. Usually it's a peripheral, like an external drive, keyboard or mouse, or printer. Once in a while it's caused by bad RAM or a frayed cable or bad solder joint somewhere.

On very rare occasions software will attempt to access a bad file or sector, and kernel panic will be the result. Most often it's a physical flaw though.

Hi--

MaclessInAZ wrote:
My Mac guru since 2002, insists that Kernel Panic is always hardware related.

Your Mac guru is a little incorrect: it's often hardware related, but not always. You should send him to Apple's Tech Note TN2063, which is an article on kernel panics. There's some example code at the bottom of that article that will, once compiled and installed, cause a kernel panic on an otherwise healthy Mac.

If you have any software that installs kernel extensions, that could cause kernel panics. A while back, an anti-virus program was coming up with a false positive in the OS X virtual memory files and deleting them, causing kernel panics. That's purely software related. If you install VMWare or Parallels, they install kernel extensions. If they have a bug in their code, you could get panics.

So, it's probably best to suspect hardware to start with, since it's very often the cause of a panic, and it's easy to check with the hardware test disc. But it won't always be hardware...

charlie